With the advancement in technology, there have been phenomenal changes in the design and usage of multimedia devices. Multimedia devices provide access to a variety of media content, which can be stored on the multimedia device or on another device interfaced with the multimedia device. The media content can be audio files, video files, graphic files, animation files, or text files. Providing access to media content stored on a multimedia device gives users the option of playing, viewing, sharing or sending the media content.
Currently, users with large collections of media files can spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to select the appropriate content. Very often, users are not sure about the exact nature of media content they want to access, but rather have just a vague idea about the kind of media content they are interested in. Thus, precise queries or static hierarchies are often insufficient for a user's real needs. While some multimedia devices have tried to solve the time-consuming nature of media searches by providing users with the option of selecting various criteria, these devices still require users to explicitly select a criterion and thus do not solve the problems associated with exact queries. For example, users can only specify that they want to access content with a particular title, from a particular singer, from a specific album, or from a specific genre, and the like. Users of these systems have no way to express that they want content that is faster, slower, older, newer, or the like, which are often the ways that the users are thinking about the content. As a result, the user may not be satisfied with the media content that is provided by the multimedia device.
Hence, there is a need for a multimedia device that simplifies the selection of media content for a user. The multimedia device should provide a particular type of media content to the user rather than particular media content. Further, there is a need for the multimedia device to make a broad selection of media content possible, without providing only specific media content and without being overly broad so that the selection is not random.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated, relative to other elements, to help to improve an understanding of embodiments of the present invention.